When Ghosts Attack

By Bill Knell

Anyone that has been involved with hands-on paranormal research for any length of time has probably experienced the physical manifestations of ghostly activity. Whether it’s merely a tap on your shoulder or a hard slap on your face, it’s something that happens without any easy or sensible explanation. It’s also something that you never forget.

As a paranormal researcher that has set UFOs as my primary area of interest, I am used to coming in after the fact. Because of the nature of UFO phenomenon, I am forced to look for evidence that something happened. If it happens again, I am unlikely to be there when it does. That’s what makes ghost research a bit more appealing at times.

When someone reports ghostly activity to me, I might get the opportunity to experience the same phenomenon that the witness did if I take on the investigation. In some cases, I may experience more and I am not always ready for it. However, there are no shortcuts and if you want to hang around the paranormal pool, you are going to eventually get wet.

It’s my nature to invest a lot of time in most of the interesting and promising paranormal phenomenon cases that come my way. I hate shotgun ghost hunting where debunking is the primary goal and little time is given to the actual investigation. Most of that occurs because many ghost hunters don’t understand that ghostly phenomenon probably doesn’t exist in the same linear time that they do.

My first experience with a very physical ghost came in 1975. I was contacted by someone that owned an older house in a Michigan suburb. The home was occupied by a family of two adults and five children ages six to seventeen years of age. As usual, there was a catalyst that may have got things started or stepped them up to the next level.

The seventeen year old boy and his fifteen year old sister started playing around with a Ouija Board. Both were obsessed with contacting the spirit of Janis Joplin. Joplin died a few years before of a drug and alcohol overdose. They held several Ouija sessions without any success and decided to include two other friends hoping for better results. Their friends were both sixteen year old teenage girls.

The foursome took the Ouija Board to a small storage room on the third floor of their house. That floor was little more than a finished attic. It had a small bedroom where the older teen boy slept at the eastern end of the house, a long and wide hall just off the stairs and the small storage room at the western end that was sparsely filled with old boxes and disused furniture.

Their first attempt to use the board as a foursome took place in the dead of winter. They managed to get the board to spell out G-U-I-D-E. They assumed that meant that a spirit guide was now in contact with them. Before they could go further, the boy started having terrible pain in his groin area. Then the pain moved to his side and stopped in less than a minute. It was replaced by a very hot feeling on the right side of his body. Upset and worried, the boy hurried down the stairs to the second floor bathroom and examined himself. The mirror revealed a very distinct gash that looked like a burn mark. It was about five inches in length and just above his beltline.

The family contacted me after hearing about another investigation I had been involved with through a family friend. He heard me talking about ghosts during a guest spot on a talk radio show. I arrived at the house less than a week after the first Ouija Board attempt by the foursome. The first thing I discovered was that the boy’s sister had also experienced physical phenomenon, but hadn’t told anyone.

She found unexplained gashes on her chest and abdomen after the Ouija session, but didn’t feel anything at the time. The other two girls involved may have had some physical evidence as well, but decided not to participate in the investigation or any more Ouija sessions. I suggested that the brother and sister reframe from any further Ouija sessions as well and they complied with my request.

I spoke with the family at length and discovered that the house they lived in was once owned by a Master Baker that eventually bought several bakeries in the area during the 1940s and expanded them into successful businesses. He retired in the late 1950s and passed away in the home during the early 1960s when it was sold to the family I was interviewing. The parents of the two teens that had the weird gashes admitted having their own strange experiences in the house.

Both said they saw a figure of a man they believed was the deceased Baker standing near their bed late at night on several occasions. Two of their younger children kept saying that they were being visited by a man in a white uniform. A photo of the baker provided by his widow (she lived in a retirement home nearby) was identified as the man the children saw. When I spoke to his widow and mentioned the gashes on the teenage brother and sister, she mentioned how that he often had small burn marks on his arms and other areas of his body from the baking he did. I also discovered that the Baker died of cancer and became violently ill, throwing up frequently during the final months of his life.

The States of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio are home to some of the most haunted places in the USA. It didn’t surprise me to discover a case of this type in that region. What did surprise me was the feeling that I was being pushed around as I walked through the house. It was almost like a gentle shove, but different. I came back to the house on several occasions and felt that something didn’t want me there. It wasn’t the family. They were friendly, forthcoming with information and welcomed my help.

On my fifth visit, I decided to bring some reinforcements. A Lutheran Pastor that believed in house blessing and exorcism came with me. We weren’t in the house for two minutes before he became violently ill and had to excuse himself to use the rest room. Having known him and his family for a while, I knew this was no act. He was physically sick. A few minutes later, he came out of the rest room and showed me his arm. He had a gash that looked like a burn mark on it. I felt lucky that I hadn’t yet experienced that phenomenon.

The pastor blessed the house and said several prayers while the family sat around and I observed the entire event. During this time we all felt very uncomfortable. I began to feel physically ill and very stressed. Knowing that I would probably be the next one to throw up, I went outside for some fresh air. I still threw up and felt terribly ill. Fortunately, the feeling didn’t last long and I didn’t notice any gashes or other physical phenomenon. I went back in and felt relatively comfortable for the rest of the ceremony.

The pastor came back with me and repeated the house blessing several times over the next week until things settled down. There were no more instances of physical phenomenon and neither of us became ill again. However, the family still felt a presence for some time. After a few personal items ended up being moved around from one room to another without explanation, I enlisted the help of several members of a Spiritualist Church located in Detroit. They came out and managed to help neutralize the remainder of the ghostly activity.

My next major experience with aggressive ghostly activity took place in Florida. I was in the Orlando area during the mid-1990s when a friend that went to high school with me years before called to ask if I was going to attend a twenty year reunion. We got together and started hanging out. Because I hadn’t lived in Florida for a while, Johnny and I barely saw each other over the past decade. We had been close friends in school and were glad to renew our friendship.

Both of us were now married and had children. Johnny loved to watch sports and it was tough to go anywhere with him that didn’t involve a stadium. Fortunately, he also enjoyed billiards, bowling and movies which were more to my liking. My wife and I joined Johnny and his wife for many enjoyable evenings at billiards, going to the movies and visiting each at home.

I was busy working with the promotion of several films I have been involved with during that time. Once that settled down, we started going bowling and playing billiards. During that time, Johnny asked if I would speak with his sister. I met her on previous occasions and knew that she had some issues with various ex-boyfriends. Johnny thought that Stacy was bi-polar, but she always seemed to get a clean bill of health from mental health practitioners.

Stacy was doing fine until she hit her junior year in high school. Then she went boy crazy. She always had several boyfriends taking her out, all at the same time. This created lots of confrontations and problems for her family. Johnny stayed clear of the mess because Stacy was always able to take care of herself. She was a kind of pretty tom boy that loved to beat up on her boyfriends if they said or did something she didn’t like.

Johnny wanted me to talk with Stacy because she began telling him about strange phenomenon she was experiencing. She lived in a small, one bedroom condo on the first floor in Kissimmee. When Johnny and I dropped by to see her, it was like a reunion. Stacy was acting like her usual self and nothing seemed strange. She did say that she would wake up and find things moved around, but I assumed that was due to her revolving door-style love life with new people coming and going all the time. She also mentioned hearing strange noises and voices, but I noticed that the walls were not especially thick in her condo.

Nothing Stacy told me during that first meeting gave me the impression that anything paranormal was happening in her life. Johnny laughed and said, “Let’s come back next week.” I agreed and we returned the following week to find a very disturbing situation. Johnny rang the bell to her condo and Stacy answered. I could hardly believe my eyes.

Stacy’s condo was a mess. Things were thrown everywhere and Stacy looked like she had been in a fight. Johnny told me that this happened at least once a week and had been happening every since high school. I was mystified, but tended to believe she was suffering from some psychological disorder.

Johnny didn’t say much about Stacy’s situation prior to the mess we walked into. I assume that he wanted me to see it for myself. He wasn’t a big believer in paranormal phenomenon, but was aware of some of the ghost cases I worked on during my high school days. He knew something was happening with Stacy and had exhausted most of the conventional explanations.

I questioned Stacy about the change she experienced in high school. She told me that it was like waking up one day and finding yourself sharing a body with someone else. I knew that adolescents and teens always seemed particularly vulnerable to ghostly phenomenon and some believe they might actually be a causative factor in the whole thing.

Stacy was always a kind of tomboy, but her new added personality was far more aggressive than she was. It made her feel out of control and came on without warning. Most of what she experienced would be more easily explained from a mental health standpoint, but she had been for all kinds of physical and mental examinations without any specific finding. There were some supernatural aspects.

Johnny was occasionally absent minded. He would misplace things. On the night that he was set to ask his wife to marry him, he misplaced his car keys. He wasn’t living at home, but had a friend drop him by his parent’s house to see if they had a spare set. He had given his parents a spare set to hold for him. Unfortunately, they were out for the evening and couldn’t be reached. Stacy was still living at home and came to the rescue.

Stacy walked into the house while Johnny was there and seeing he was upset, asked what was wrong. He told her about the keys and she tried to help him find the spare set. The spare keys couldn’t be located. Stacy developed a headache and went to her room to lie down. While Johnny was still trying to locate the spare keys, Stacy suddenly reappeared in the living room and started yelling at him.

She cursed at Johnny and told him he was an idiot. After a stream of verbal abuse, she suggested that he go back home and check his bathroom floor for the keys. He got a ride home and found his keys on the bathroom floor. On another occasion, he misplaced his wallet. Because he had been to Stacy’s condo earlier that evening, he stopped by to see if it was there.

As before, Stacy began suddenly angry and told him that he should look for his wallet at a nearby restaurant. Johnny and his wife went to the eatery earlier that evening, but Stacy didn’t know that. When he went to the restaurant and asked about the wallet, the manager said it had been found and turned it over to Johnny.

All of these events could be conventionally explained, but there were some other stories involving Stacy that were a bit harder to ignore. I knew two of her former boyfriends through Johnny. When we talked to them, both admitted to witnessing unexplained phenomenon involving her. One said that she caused him to feel a sensation like scratching on his back when she was sitting across the room. Another said he felt as if he had been kicked in the back of his leg on several occasions while over her place when Stacy wasn’t close enough to make contact with him.

After we left Stacy’s condo, Johnny admitted that he had experienced some of the same mild attacks that her former boyfriends did. He had been kicked and even hit on the arm when Stacy was around without any physical contact with her. He hadn’t told me before because he wanted me to speak with her and the boyfriends first. The most recent incident took place just a few weeks before.

I asked Johnny if he saw Stacy throwing things around her room when she lived at home or her condo. He said that she was always quiet in her room. The only time she became aggressive was when people were around. Some of her girl friends from high school that Johnny knew recalled being on the receiving end of her tirades. None that I met admitted any physical phenomenon, but I sense that at least two were not telling the entire story.

Needless to say, Stacy lost any close female friends she had in her junior year of high school and didn’t have any close friends when I visited her. Men seemed more able to deal with her problems than women, and most of those that got involved with her didn’t stay involved for very long. This all surprised me because the Stacy I met seemed very nice and well behaved up to that point.

On a later visit to Stacy, I experienced my own phenomenon. Stacy became agitated, although she did not seem at all abusive or angry to me. She was upset and couldn’t explain why. After talking with her and Johnny for about thirty minutes, I felt several slight pinches on both my arms. These were distinct and made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I was sitting on a chair away from Stacy and Johnny at the time and no marks were left on either arm. Johnny later told me that he felt something was trying to push him out of his chair as he was getting up when it was time for us to leave.

The next time we went to see Stacy; she had some weird marks on her neck. With extremely fair skin, the marks were obvious to me and I noticed them right away. When I asked Stacy about them, she said that she couldn’t account for them. While I still felt that at least some of her behavior might best be explained from a mental health standpoint, there was no doubt that at least some paranormal activity was involved in her life.

I called a Spiritualist Medium that I knew in Cassadaga, Florida. Cassadaga is a town founded by Spiritualists that isn’t far from Orlando. She suggested that Stacy come there and meet with her. Although I wasn’t able to go with them, Johnny and Stacy did visit the medium. She felt that a physical confrontation with a Relative years before might have been the reason for her present trouble.

Stacy had a cousin named Erin. As children, they attended the same elementary school for several years. Although the families were close, the two girls never got along. Stacy disliked Erin because she felt that her cousin always got more attention than she did during family gatherings. As a result, Stacy constantly taunted Erin at school. Things came to a head and the two ended up in a fight.

Erin was badly beaten by Stacy and needed a number of stitches. Erin’s parents decided to place her in another nearby school to keep the two apart. The incident placed a huge strain on the entire family and Stacy wasn’t allowed contact with any of her friends for several months. Erin was extremely unhappy in her new school and never forgave Stacy.

While Stacy was in her junior year of High School, Erin was killed in an auto accident. It was at that point that Stacy began having problems. Neither Johnny nor Stacy ever considered this coincidence to be the cause of her problems, but the medium saw Erin around Stacy during their session. I’m not even sure if the medium believed that was all there was to it, but after that session things quieted down.

Stacy offered a profound apology to Erin and visited her grave with flowers on several occasions after the visit to the medium. I visited Stacy a couple of more times until I moved out of the Orlando area and found no further problems apart from her still somewhat bizarre personality quarks. Although Johnny passed away a couple of years ago due to illness, we stayed in touch until his death. He told me that Stacy was doing better and that there had been no paranormal activity in her life since the visit to the medium.

Source